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Giddy up! At more than 21,000, the Dow Jones Industrial Index has soared by 1,200 points or about 13% since January 2017. If you consider the run-up since February 2016, the stock market has delivered a staggering return of about 30%. The stock market has been on the best winning streak in 25 years.

One fundamental reason for the stock market rally is linked to the growth of Exchange Traded Funds, or ETFs, as retail investors have poured in $124 billion into this type of an investment vehicle in 2017 alone.

State Street Corp.’s SPDR S&P 500 ETF is the market’s oldest, largest and the most-traded security in the world.

Love Thy ETF

Introduced in 1993, ETFs, or Exchange Traded Funds, trade on an exchange like stocks. An ETF is a marketable security that tracks an index, a commodity, bonds, or a basket of assets like an index fund. Unlike actively traded mutual funds, an ETF trades like a common stock on a stock exchange. ETFs experience price changes throughout the day as they are bought and sold.

ETFs typically have lower fees than mutual funds, making them an attractive alternative for individual investors. Shareholders do not have any direct claim on the underlying investments in the fund, instead, they indirectly own these assets.

According to research firm XTF, there are around 1,800 ETF investment vehicles holding stock worth more than $2.7 trillion. There are no SEC rules governing ETFs which means ETFs are regulated via mutual fund regulation. Just three firms

— BlackRock Inc.

— State Street Corp.’s State Street Global Advisors

— Vanguard Group

manage 80% of ETF assets.

ETF vs Actively Managed Funds

ETFs try to track the performance of a particular market benchmark, or “index,” as closely as possible. In contrast, Actively Managed Funds (AMFs) try to outperform their benchmarks and peer group average.

ETFs buy all (or a representative sample) of the securities in the benchmark, while AMFs combine research, forecasting, and experience/expertise of a portfolio manager or management team.

Index funds tend to be more tax-efficient and have lower expense ratios than actively managed funds because they trade less frequently than AMFs.

Although AMFs attempt to beat the market, quite often they may also miss their targets which results in losses for the funds’ investors. In contrast, ETFs are only undertaking the underlying risk of the market benchmark.

Most importantly, AMFs typically charge between five and twenty-five times what ETFs charge their investors.

Not surprisingly, the pace of ETF inflows bodes negative news for asset managers. Investors have started pulling their investments from AMFs to ETFs. The largest providers of ETFs have started reducing management fees to attract even more funds. The average annual fee of ETFs bought this year is only $23 for every $10,000 invested, sharply lower than last year. Some ultralow-cost iShares Core funds cost as little as $4 a year for a $10,000 investment, which is can be about 1/25th fraction of the fees charged by most mutual funds.

Given the low-cost structure of ETFs and the raging bull market, $7.5 billion has moved into the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF and $5.4 billion into the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF in January 2017 alone!

Hamiltonian Hip Hop and ETFs

Lately, the US stock market has generated staggering returns unmatched by almost any other country. Take for instance the returns generated from an investment in S&P 500 stocks in the last eight years.

2009 26%

2010 15%

2011 2%

2012 16%

2013 32%

2014 14%

2015 1%

2016 12%

If you invested in the S&P 500 from 1928 to 2014, the per annum compound rate of return was 9.8%. Thus, if you invested $100 in 1928, your nest egg would become $346,261 in 2014.

Join and celebrate the US goldilocks economy and consider becoming an ETF shareholder.

The annual return for investing in the U.S. stock market over the last 50 years has been around 7-8%. How can one explain this remarkable growth in the U.S. stock market? The Sage from Omaha, Warren Buffett, has a lucid and precise response. The U.S. economy, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing, and is expected to grow, at an annual rate of about 3%. The inflation is about 2 to 3% which pushes nominal GDP growth to 5-6 %. Stocks pay about 1-2 % of dividend which increases the growth rate to about 6-8 %.

If you were fortunate enough to have invested during the bull market, i.e., 1982 to 1999, the S&P 500 Index, a common benchmark for U.S. stocks, would have crowned you with returns of about 18 percent per year. You surecannot beat these numbers unless you happen to be the humanitarian George Clooney with the reliable Ocean’s Eleven to back you up!

Risk

So where is the risk if you make 6-8% each year when the period is dull and about 18% during the bull period, which is no bull.

While these numbers are average returns, for some decades you could have easily lost money (e.g., 1970s and 2000s). Sadly, more than half the adult American population gets deprived of the “vintage bourbon” offered by the US equity market. Only 48% of adult Americans have a claim on the returns offered by the US stock market, which is such a travesty. A considerable majority has foregone the benefits of the goldilocks economy.

The Best Bet

The stock market remains the best bet for growing and preserving your financial assets. If you invested in Certificate of Deposits (CDs) with banks, you would earn about 7% in the early 1990s and about 1-2% in the last 5 years. If you invested in government bonds, which is only possible via an authorized stock broker, you would have earned between 2 and 6% in the last 30 years. If you had invested in AAA corporate bonds, you would have earned between 3 and 6% per year.

Clearly, the US stock market offers the best returns in the long run with very little risk when the investment horizon is sufficiently long.

The Van Guard(ing) your Assets

The million-dollar question for your million-dollar investment is what stocks do you pick or what fund/portfolio-manager do you choose?

The relatively safest and least costly method is to pick an index mutual fund. Instead of hiring fund managers to actively select which stocks or bonds the fund will hold, an index fund buys all (or a representative sample) of the securities in a specific index, like the S&P 500 Index. The goal of an index fund is to track the performance of a specific market benchmark as closely as possible, which is why index funds are also referred to as a “passively managed” fund.

The all-time favorite financial company offering index funds happens to be Vanguard Group because they charge very little commission or administrative fee for managing your assets. Vanguard’s 500 Index Fund started business with $11.3 million in assets. Today, the same fund holds more than $252 billion, i.e., the Fund’s assets grew by around 23,000 times.

By investing in the Index Funds like the S&P 500, you must calibrate your expectations. You should not expect staggering returns from investing in a few darling stocks like Tesla or Amazon or Apple. Why? Because those are much riskier bets. You sure make money when the market loves those stocks, but you could also lose your shirt when the market turns its roving eye towards other more attractive beauties. By investing in the Index Fund, you have committed yourself to getting whatever returns the market offers which, in this case, happens to be returns on the S&P 500 index.

Alpha-Males

Some would advise that you seek “alphas” by investing your money in hedge funds or mutual funds choreographed by “superstar” portfolio managers. While this seems like an attractive proposition, chasing these types of funds or portfolio managers can be akin to making a million through lotto tickets. The odds are heavily stacked against you; you might as well give your money to some charity.

There is another caveat. Superstar managers and high profile mutual funds will charge you a bulky administrative fees (> 1%). In addition, you must pay about 20% performance fees, especially to hedge funds.

Possible because of the realization that it is impossible to beat the market consistently over the long run (academics have been saying this for more than 30 years), or for the fear of paying exorbitant fees, index funds have grown in astounding popularity. From their start at $11 million in 1976, index funds grew only to $511 million by 1985, and thereafter expanded more than 100-fold over the next decade to $55 billion in 1995. Their assets hit $868 billion by 2005, and the future still looks very bright so you need wear shades.

Are you ready to invest in the stock market and Index Funds to help grow your financial assets. It sure beats any other form of legitimate financial investment.